Two players on the Steubenville High School football team were found guilty yesterday of raping
a drunken 16-year-old girl, a verdict that some hope will start healing a Rust Belt town that has
been ripped apart by accusations of a cover-up to protect its athletes.

But it appears the saga is far from over. State Attorney General Mike DeWine said moments after
the verdict that he will convene a grand jury in Jefferson County to decide if any of the 16 people
who refused to cooperate in his investigation should be charged with crimes.

Judge Thomas Lipps sentenced teenagers Trent Mays, 17, and Ma’Lik Richmond, 16, to at least one
year in juvenile detention for digitally penetrating the 16-year-old West Virginia girl during an
alcohol-fueled party near Steubenville last summer.

“They treated her like a toy,” Prosecutor Marianne Hemmeter said.

Prosecutors said the victim was so intoxicated that she couldn’t consent to sex that night,
while the defense said the girl realized what she was doing and was known to lie.

Mays was sentenced to an additional year of detention because he distributed nude pictures of
the girl using his cellphone.

The boys also must register as sex offenders.

Lipps determined the boys were guilty after a four-day trial and sentenced them without a jury.
Both could end up in juvenile jail until they are 21, at the discretion of the state Department of
Youth Services, but Lipps said the sentences give the boys “an incentive to do good.”

Their punishment was thought to cap a case that has brought international attention to the town
of 18,000 because numerous students sent photos and videos of the attack through text messages and
posted them on social-media websites.

But DeWine’s announcement in Steubenville yesterday will keep a focus on the incident and a city
that worships its Big Red high-school football team.

“I have reached the conclusion that this investigation cannot be completed and we cannot move
forward without convening a grand jury,” DeWine said, setting a date of April 15 for the grand
jury. “I anticipate numerous witnesses could be called ... and indictments could be returned and
charges could be filed.”

DeWine would not discuss names of those suspected, but he did not rule out anyone connected to
the incident.

Mays and Richmond wept as the judge read the verdicts. Mays apologized to the victim, who was
not in court yesterday, and her family. “No pictures should have been sent around, let alone ever
taken,” he said.

Richmond walked toward the victim’s parents in the courtroom to apologize.“I had not intended to
do anything like this,” he said. “I’m sorry to put you through this.” After that, he broke down,
unable to speak.

“My life is over,” he said as he collapsed in the arms of his attorney.

The victim testified on Saturday that she could not recollect what happened to her the day of
the attack, but she did remember waking up naked in a strange house after drinking. She said she
remembered leaving a party while holding hands with Mays and throwing up.

She said when she woke up her phone, earrings, shoes and underwear were missing.

“It was really scary,” she said.

The girl later discovered she was sexually assaulted after reading some of her friends’ text
messages and seeing a photo of herself taken during the party and a video that was made of her
being assaulted.

Some of the photos and subsequent emails and text messages were plastered all over the Internet
by a hacker-activist group. The group accused county and local officials of a cover-up to protect
the Big Red football team, which has won nine state championships.

The photos led to allegations that three other boys, two of them members of the team, witnessed
Mays and Richmond assaulting the girl but did nothing to stop it.

The crime shocked many in Steubenville because of the seeming callousness with which other
students recorded the attack on their cellphones and gossiped about it online.

“Many of the things we learned during this trial that our children were saying and doing were
profane, were ugly,” Judge Lipps said.

He urged parents and others “to have discussions about how you talk to your friends, how you
record things on the social media so prevalent today and how you conduct yourself when drinking is
put upon you by your friends.”

Prosecutors said the three witnesses stopped cooperating after the hacker group’s postings. They
were granted immunity to testify. Their accounts of the attack helped incriminate Mays and Richmond
by confirming they witnessed the girl being penetrated and that she was too drunk to know what was
happening to her.

DeWine said those boys could be charged if evidence leads to charges outside of their immunity
agreements.

DeWine’s investigators interviewed more than 50 people since getting involved in August at the
request of the Steubenville Police Department. The 16 who refused to cooperate in his investigation
are mostly juveniles, he said.

“I will not speculate on charges (they could face) but ... failure to report a felony is a
misdemeanor and tampering with evidence is a felony.”

“This community desperately needs to have this behind them, but this community also desperately
needs to know justice was done and that no stone was left unturned.”

Information from the Associated Press and the New York Times was included in this story.